European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - August 16, 1989, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Magazine the dream that never ends by Allan Parachini los Angeles times talking tentatively As if entering a shrine Lour Young men wandered into the Largo sloping Hayfield on a Little country Lane called Hurd Road a Lew Miles from White Lake n.y., a Catskill Mountain Village 90 Miles Northwest of now York City. Eventually three of them sat Down in the grass and chuckled As the fourth a 16 year old High school student played the air As if it were a guitar imitating the stereotyped choreography of Rock bands. It is easy enough to find the Hayfield but it no longer has any resemblance to the form it took for three Days aug. 15-17. 1969. Unaware of his precise location in the Field until a stranger told him 16-year old Mike Gore of Dudley mass., had mimed his guitar licks at precisely the spot where 20 years ago this week the stage was positioned before an audience of somewhere Between 350,000 and 750,000 people no one will Ever know How Many for the High water Mark of what today seems another age. Woodstock More properly the Woodstock music & Art fair. An aquarian exposition. Three Days of peace and music an event that defined its time and affected a generation two decades later Woodstock s lasting imprint on America remains and May even be increasingly controversial perhaps some say. It was just a wonderful party hold at a Point when so much seemed possible. A parly so memorable that some people mistakenly believed its radiated effects would change the world. The More cynical argue that such thinking was a Mirage. The Woodstock nation quickly returned to its same compromised values and the parly s real legacy became the drug epidemic and. The self entered me generation. Others say Woodstock helped end the Vietnam War and that the Era ushered in the women s and environmental movements an ongoing legacy that shines brighter than the festival s flamboyant excesses what seems Clear after two decades is that Woodstock s hold on the imagination remains Strong enough to lure teen agers who were not even born in 1969 and who seem indifferent to Many of the social and political Twenty years ago this week a crowd estimated at from 350,000 to As Many As 750,000 people gathered Tor the Woodstock festival in upstate new York. It was an event that defined its time and affected a generation. Values in espoused. And ils Sway still proves Strong in wistfully so Lor the generation that lived in but watched things turn out differently than they expected. I think Woodstock represents a dream said Leo Blumer who worked on the festival s Security staff in 1969. Today she is an executive with a production company owned by Mike Lang who As a 24-year-old hippie conceived the idea for Woodstock and served As the festival s producer. The Woodstock festival Blum or said recently in Lang s comfortable loft office in the Soho District of Manhattan moved the consciousness of a whole generation. Ii May have been less than one degree but it moved  Lang who now runs better music and maintains a country House in Woodstock itself has never lost the hippie sincerity that somehow made the Woodstock festival happen despite the longest conceivable Odds i think that what Woodstock probably did was confirm a lot of positions people were taking in the 60s and confirmed that there were lots More people who were of the same mind Lang said. John Mcdargh a Boston College theology professor believes Woodstock to have been what theologians Call a Karolic moment one that is unique and cannot be repeated. Since this was so Mcdargh contended today s Young people not Only cannot identify with its values but have come to distrust members of the Woodstock nation there is a funny sort of mixed ambivalent nostalgia Mcdargh said of today s perceptions of Woodstock a Groat Many students have this image that everybody from the Woodstock Era has ended up As in the 1983 motion picture the big chill. Their be Elm is if you try to stay faithful to your ideals you re dead or your brain is Fried or you sold out. The Way it affects them is if i get committed won t i be left looking foolish and alone " even observers who credit Woodstock with permanently changing american life Are troubled by the came perceptions. Ann Kaplan an English professor and director of the humanities Institute at the stale University of now York at Stony Brook said the feminist movement that sprang up in the 1960s is Likely to remain a key element of the Woodstock Era legacy. But Kaplan is also troubled by a contrary legacy symbolized she said by the drug related suicide in april of 60s Radical Abbie Hoffman. Abbie Hoffman s death affected me greatly she wednesday August 16, 1989 said because to was a Symbol of the Woodstock Era. I just was convinced that he looked at the 1980s and said this is no world Lor Molo live in " to academics like Mcdargh the legacy of Woodstock Lor today s teen agers and Young adults is almost schizophrenic. Ils memories Are of excesses such As drugs tempered by the realization that something captivating was happening then that is not happening now. Woodstock represents an Era today s Young wish they could relive. But it is history except for the music that today s Young people have adopted As their own without knowing the social and cultural context that originally produced in. La s As if they today s Young people missed out on something Mcdargh said. They All know the 1960s music but it s not their music on the other hand there is a kind of rejection. Kids will say i would never demonstrate. Thai s so 60s. " Hoffman died As arrangements were pending Lor him to be interviewed for this article. But he addressed issues of Woodstock s connection to today s Young people with author Joel Makower whose Book Woodstock the Oral history was published by Doubleday in july. Hoffman was a major Woodstock figure because when he tried to seize the microphone to make a political speech. Pete Townshend of the Rock group the who kicked him off the stage Hoffman spent the rest of the festival acting with striking effectiveness As administrator of a first Aid tent. It s sad because it the lifestyle and values of Iho Woodstock generation in l going on today Hollman told Makower because it s part of the past because youth makes revolution youth makes social change. The question is not what happened to those of us who went to Woodstock it s where s Iho Woodstock for today s generation the stars and stripes Woodstock 2qyears later Page 13